Happy New Year and welcome to the 2012 edition of the TRFN top 50 deviations of the year. This will be the 4th edition of this feature.

As a new year begins, #The-Railfan-Nation has grown rapidly in the past year by 145 members. This means that out of the 1,121 currently listed members each deviant has a 4.5% mathematical chance of making this feature. Thus if you have made this feature earning any spot from 1 to 50 is a very difficult accomplishment that you have accomplished. Just anything will not make it in this feature all images in this feature made it in because of impressive stats. These deviations all collected these stats for a reason. Many of them reached outside the railfan community and drew interest from non-railfans as well. My standards for this list as always will be listed below.

The process was hard fought as I started on the 20th with work on this list. This time I was alone so I personally scouted out all 1,121 galleries. Due to obvious time constraints I have also announced several times through blogs that anybody with a recently popular 2012 deviation needed to alert me. I acknowledge the fact that scanning the galleries is a long process. Thus, this means because I started on the 20th there were some deviations that could have got popular after I scouted. This is my reason for making the blogs so recently popular deviations have a better chance at being counted since it is humanly impossible for me by myself catch them all if they are recently popular. So if you have one that could have made this feature that falls under this criterion and failed to inform me too bad. I wrote about 3 or 4 blogs addressing this exact issue so there was plenty of warning about it. Our blogs often have important info because they are the admin's best way of communicating with the group. Thus, it is the consequence of not reading them. So I do not want to get any nasty responses or hate mail if I've missed anybody in this manner. Stats may not necessarily be accurate.

One special thing about this year is this year’s #50 has just about the same stats as last year’s #50. Really something I never expected. I thought because of group growth that this year’s #50 would have to acquire at least 80 faves but my prediction was off this time. #50 has only 62 which actually tied last year. That is a first!

In my yearly thought, I noticed while treading all the galleries, there is this trend going around where certain users will only submit us their lower quality works rather than giving some of their best works a chance. Not to insult or call anybody out, but to alert some of you that you are missing out. I’ll look in their galleries and say, “Hey wait a minute, this guy has this awesome image in his gallery but he will not submit it, yet he was sending us all kinds of blurry images.” I think the fact that some users seem to forsake submitting some of their best works to groups like ours really does not earn them much exposure. When you promote low quality works over high quality works sometimes you will be known for your lower quality work better. That is not the best situation. This year I encourage members to look at what they have in their gallery and submit pieces that are their best quality. It turns out there are a lot of diamonds in the rough as far as railfan deviations go that could easily have acquired the stats to make in the top 10 of this top 50. But because the artist left them be, they hardly got noticed. In response to this trend I am considering making a snub list for next year’s top 50. Where I feature deviations that I think went under recognized. Currently we do not have one because this year I do not have the time to do this. Honestly it is very unreal how many underrated deviations I have seen this year. It is not usually a problem when I punch in these stats.

Along with the past success of this article, I have decided to possibly do a top 100 all time deviations article that would be published every summer. I’m still wrestling with the idea.

All deviations featured must conform to TRFN submission standards which is not very strict.
All of the following are TRFN members.
Deviations are ranked based on faves.
All featured works were posted in 2012. This refers to date posted not technically date taken/made. (Example: a photo taken in 2010 but posted on deviantART in 2012 can qualify).
Policy violations are not counted in the ranks no matter how many faves they have. All deviations mentioned below passed TRFN inspection. Obviously a policy violation making the top 50 would understandably anger people. So final results are subjected to a point to point inspection, and if something is found to be in violation of dA policy it is rejected from the line-up immediately. (Example: Stolen material will be treated as though it never existed. So if someone posted a stolen pic that racked up enough faves to make the top 50 and I didn't notice it the first time it is automatically ejected in the final inspection process.)

50. ~ZCochrane
49. =SgtBoognish
48. *eyepilot13
47. *Wessonnative
46. ~SwissTrain
45. *shenanigan87
44. *CanadianRy
43. ~Peti44
42. ~matt-durkan-railways 4 times in a row on the top 50!
41. *3window34
40. *ISIK5
39. ~wildbunchz
38. ~czajka
37. =sullivan1985
36. ~irwingcommand 4 times in a row on the top 50!
35. *basseca
34. *clippercarrillo
33. *PUFFINSTUDIOS
32. *markkarvon
31. ~mysteria-violent
30. ~Torqie
29. *SMT-Images
28. *MeganekkoPlymouth241
27. *eDDie-TK
26. ~the-railblazer
25. ~mikopol
24. *daxusx
23. *Zavorka
22. *Beezqp
21. *NunoFigueira
20. *DasGhul
19. *DragonWolfACe
18. ~b-and-icoot
17. ~steamby51
16. *masscreation
15. *Metal-Bender
14. *zulumike
13. *johngiannis27
12. *jonniedee
11. ~fly10
10. *CJSutcliffe 4 times in a row on the top 50!
9. *DanielJButler
8. *lilithfirefly
7. *RollingFishays
6. ~rlkitterman
5. ~DaisyMeadow DD feature
4. *dorukseymen DD feature
3. ~toniart57
2. *the-big-red DD feature
1.  *Pajunen A NEW RECORD FOR FAVES IN ONE YEAR! Didn’t need a daily deviation feature ether.

In addition to this list we now only have three deviants who have made all top 50 list to date they are *CJSutcliffe, ~irwingcommand, and ~matt-durkan-railways. !Herr-Flick deactivated this year so this special list is down to only three.

So guys please spread the word about this article if you have the time and have a productive 2013.

Signed,
Co-founder Joseph W. Johns


Last Year's results 2011.

P.S. I’m still pissed that dA decided to merge the journals and news articles last year it was much better when I could write this as a news article.